The Free Academy opened its doors in January, 1849 in a new building "far uptown" at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue. The first class of 143 young men and the Academy's nine faculty members assembled in the chapel of the four-story, red brick structure with Gothic towers and turrets to hear President Horace Webster sum up The Academy's mission. "The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people — the children of the whole people — can be educated; and whether an institution of learning of the highest grade can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few. . . ."